How do judges of the Supreme Court of California reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Supreme Court of California / Joined 1926 / Served to 1945

Jesse W. Curtis Sr.

Justice, Supreme Court of California

Jesse W. Curtis Sr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California, who joined the court in 1926. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1865–1950
Tenure: 1926–1945 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1926	Supreme Court of California	–	–

Education

University of California-Berkeley

Judicial Record

In our data, Curtis authored 584 published opinions for the court (1914–1944), plus 45 dissents and 13 concurrences. Most cited: Universal Sales Corp. v. California Press Manufacturing Co. (343 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 83 of these were attributed to Curtis by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1942	Universal Sales Corp. v. California Press Manufacturing Co.	20 Cal. 2d 751	343
1943	People v. Ricciardi· Concurrence†	23 Cal. 2d 390	216
1942	County of Los Angeles v. Frisbie	19 Cal. 2d 634	193
1943	Bacich v. Board of Control· Concurrence†	23 Cal. 2d 343	192
1944	People v. Holt· Dissent†	25 Cal. 2d 59	190
1941	Walsh v. Walsh	18 Cal. 2d 439	184
1943	Estate of Hanley v. Hanley· Dissent†	23 Cal. 2d 120	180
1944	People v. McCoy	25 Cal. 2d 177	169
1943	People v. Dail· Dissent†	22 Cal. 2d 642	161
1937	Foster v. Foster	8 Cal. 2d 719	159
1939	Westberg v. Willde	14 Cal. 2d 360	154
1942	Laisne v. California State Board of Optometry	19 Cal. 2d 831	148
1937	Penziner v. West American Finance Co.	10 Cal. 2d 160	147
1944	Buxbom v. Smith	23 Cal. 2d 535	145
1940	People v. Warren· Concurrence†	16 Cal. 2d 103	142

Showing the 15 most-cited of 642 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Supreme Court of California reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Jesse W. Curtis Sr. on?: Jesse W. Curtis Sr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of California.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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19 years on the Supreme Court of California. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).